Posted
by
timothyon Wednesday September 26, 2012 @05:10PM
from the fukushima-not-involved dept.

Third Position writes "The most unambiguous data to date on the elusive 113th atomic element has been obtained by researchers at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-based Science (RNC). A chain of six consecutive alpha decays, produced in experiments at the RIKEN Radioisotope Beam Factory (RIBF), conclusively identifies the element through connections to well-known daughter nuclides. The search for superheavy elements is a difficult and painstaking process. Such elements do not occur in nature and must be produced through experiments involving nuclear reactors or particle accelerators, via processes of nuclear fusion or neutron absorption. Since the first such element was discovered in 1940, the United States, Russia and Germany have competed to synthesize more of them. Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans, elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans, elements 107 to 112 by the Germans, and the two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans. With their latest findings, associate chief scientist Kosuke Morita and his team at the RNC are set follow in these footsteps and make Japan the first country in Asia to name an atomic element."

Echh...such a poverty of intellect. Japan = anime. This is equivalent to hearing "America" and immediately thinking of Disney animated films to the exclusion of everything else. Japan offers so, so much more. *sigh*

Right, those are things you can find anywhere. It took Japan to bring the world anime.

Certainly, High speed rail transport is something that originally had only to be found in Japan. I enjoy anime, my nickname is based in a now obscure anime character, but Japan is full of very interesting things and its history is full of amazing characters. The Japan Tourist Organization's slogan:"Japan, endless discovery" is almost an understatement.

I think it speaks volumes that the first thing that comes to your mind to substantiate your assertion that Japan is "full of very interesting things" is to parrot Japanese governmental advertising. In any case, the element 113 story certainly has parallels with high speed rail. Not actually discovered in Japan, but promptly imported and developed. Then through the usual "Japan trick" of allowing these

No, actually, Japan shall not call it that. That's what IUPAC's temporary systematic name for it is, as discovering the transuranics is often hotly contested. IUPAC has a Greek and Latin-based naming scheme [wikipedia.org] that generates names for the undiscovered elements. So even though we've never seen a g-block element, and probably won't for at least a decade or two, IUPAC already has temporary names for them [wikipedia.org]. . . well, names beyond eka-plutonium or whatever floats your Russian bigamist [wikipedia.org] boat. Once the existence of

A Japanese scientist thought he had discovered technetium [wikipedia.org] in the early 1900s and named it nipponium, but it was actually just an impure sample of rhenium. IUPAC policy states that any name used temporarily or even incorrectly cannot ever be used again, as it would cause confusion with the literature ("Okay, so this paper says nipponium forms an alloy with carbon, iron, and silicon, while this paper says nipponium only alloys with transition metals!").

I believe it would technically be okay, but doubt IUPAC would allow it. We do have yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, and erbium, all named after a tiny village in Sweden [wikipedia.org], but they were all named 20 or 30 years before IUPAC was formed.

There will never be an element called MPAAium, since no element (or particle, for that matter) known to man has a half life that comes even close to the effectuve duration of copyright on "Steamboat Willy".

If they make the 6 soldiers a bit more powerful that might be alright. Most missions I usually dont use the whole 10+ team, since unless you take the time to rotate soldiers around, the first 6 or so do most of the work and wind up w the highest stats. And if more than 2 of my best guys die on a mission chances are I'm going to restart from save anyways. They just better keep the hovertanks!

I always use 14 people (until later when I get an avenger). When you're clearing out a terror site or capturing an alien battleship, you need the raw numbers to sweep the area. One or two guys get stuck with "motion sensor" duty, and the rookies are useful for opening suspect doors (where you know 2-3 aliens are lurking inside). Also, if the soldiers are tougher and the terror sites are smaller, there's little chance for fear. Also, I was wrong; it's a 4 soldier limit that can be expanded to 6 with add-

Element 115, for example, can be bombarded with protons to create element 116.... which is unstable and immediately decays, releasing antimatter. This antimatter is used in a total annihilation reaction to fuel the spacecraft.

Every isotope of element 115 discovered so far, like most superheavy isotopes decays by alpha particles, not positron emission. If you want positron emission, just get sodium-22, which is easy enough to get, considering you can just buy it from an educational supplier. Not really the most efficient production method of antimatter anyways, and for space propulsion, the anti-protons would be much more difficult and more useful.

No practical uses apart from scientific, as all isotopes of these superheavy elements have short half-lifes (mostly in the ms to a few seconds range). So it's impossible to put significant amounts of such an element together.

But if the "island of stability [wikipedia.org]" theory holds true, we might see some larger amounts of yet-to-be-produced elements. Which might have practical applications (but probably extremely expensive to produce).

So far the island of stability theory is holding true (with maybe a little updating on what is the best number of nucleons in a nucleus). It doesn't necessary mean the elements will be stable, just more stable... which so far means half-life of seconds.

Any "island of stability" super-heavy elements would find novel uses in chemistry (the very high distance of the outer valences from the neucleus would most probably make them very electropositive, though the potential for "very very inert" super-heavy elements also exists, which would make them useful in other ways.) The intense mass energy in them would make for some interesting experiments involving neutron capture and proton exposure. Depending on the behavior of the isotope in question, it could make a very useful radiation shielding material.

An island of stability has been observed, but so far it looks like "most stable" means half-life of a few tens of seconds instead of sub-seconds.

Also, the density will depend on the chemistry a lot, and not just increase with higher atomic mass in every case. You can look at the density of transuranic elements, and see that elements 95-99 are about 25-50% lighter than 92-94. Might be a while before a 100 kg golfball, since that would be 125 times denser than uranium. Although you can get a 0.9 kg osmiu

The most unambiguous data to date on the elusive 113th atomic element...

Elements 93 to 103 were discovered by the Americans, elements 104 to 106 by the Russians and the Americans, elements 107 to 112 by the Germans, and the two most recently named elements, 114 and 116, by cooperative work of the Russians and Americans.

Is this really news? We know that each element has N protons and electrons, and then some neutrons(not sure how that number is derived).So its not really a 'discovery' as much as a logical step. And of what use are the super dense elements when they will all require a huge amount of energy to produce AND they decay rapidly?

Now if in theory we knew that element 1337 could produce anti-gravity or some such effect not normally possible, that would give us a reason for research and producing that may be a real